Seems that I'm not blogging much on my vacation blog... BUT am mixing in photo stories along with vacation stories... so this blog will be about my photo addiction and I'll keep the vacation blog for blogging about vacations... DUH...

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Balloon Flower Stigma... floating above rain water... Summer, 2010

This is for Ginnie... along with a bit of a story. Earlier this month, I posted an image that shows an entire Balloon Flower blossom. And Ginnie left a comment about knowing who to come to if she needed help learning how to use her macro lens... so this is for her.

When the flowers turn their faces up, their "bells" catch water when it rains. I snapped this image after heavy overnight rains using extension tubes along with my macro lens. I think I used the 36mm Kenko extension tube with my Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 lens on a Nikon D90 body for this shot. ((I really MUST start taking notes... the other possibility would have been with the 12mm AND 20mm Kenko extension tubes together instead of the 36mm tube.) Using extension tubes allows for really tight focus on a very little bit of the field of view... leaving the rest as a dreamy wash of color. The stigma is about 1 cm (3/8 inch) in diameter.

Oh... before I forget... Ginnie is someone I'm getting to know through her marvelous blog... you should check it out!

4 comments:

Well, you've totally surprised me, Victoria, because I didn't expect my name here. However, THANK YOU. And thank you for your tricks of the trade. I do have extension tubes, along with a good macro lens, so now all I need to do is get to work and start experimenting. THANK YOU!

News items...

If you enjoy squirrel antics, you might like to view my Squirrel Proof - take 2collection of images. Changing the speed for 1 second display of each image makes it almost look like a movie as the silly squirrels tackle first one, then another, then the third (and newest) squirrel proof feeder hanging off my deck.